With laughter meet once more the merry jest
And great familiar faces still awake,
For I, asleep in the eternal Hush,
Would have you ever at your golden best.
'You may think it strange,' he concluded, as we turned to leave the room, 'but I often fancy that the chair in the corner makes it a little more easy for me to live in the spirit of those lines.'
IV
I had intended calling several other witnesses; but I must be content with one. Alec Fraser was a little old Scotsman, who lived about seven miles out from Mosgiel. I heard one day that he was very ill, and I drove over to see him. His daughter answered the door, showed me in, and placed a chair for me beside the bed. I noticed, on the other side of the bed, another chair. It stood directly facing the pillow, as if its occupant had been in earnest conversation with the patient.
'Ah, Alec,' I exclaimed, on greeting him, 'so I'm not your first visitor!'
He looked up surprised, and, in explanation, I glanced at the tell-tale position of the chair.
'Oh,' he said, with a smile, 'I'll tell ye aboot the chair by-and-by; but how are the wife and the weans and the kirk?'